


Focus

by WheatKing



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Canon Divergence - Mid Season 2, M/M, Metahumans, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-13
Updated: 2016-08-13
Packaged: 2018-08-08 11:37:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,610
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7756279
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WheatKing/pseuds/WheatKing
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Harrison was hard to be around. Harder than Eobard had been. As ludicrous as it sounded, they all acknowledged with silent looks at each other how much easier it had been to get along with Eobard. Even as he’d been pretending and lying and plotting.</p>
<p>Harrison Wells had been his hero.</p>
<p>Harry Wells could be an absolute asshole.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Focus

**Author's Note:**

> This is set mid to late season 2, and then diverges from canon. Jesse is saved and returns to Earth 2. Harry Wells stays.

 

It was hard to love someone. Hard to love them and not hold on too tight.

 

The love part was easy, for Barry. He’d always been quick to love. To feel that warmth and happiness, seeing them, being around them.

 

But he was a lot. He knew that.

 

People got tired of him.

 

 

* * *

 

His mind had always buzzed. Before his mom. Before the lightning. Before it all.

 

_Barry doesn’t focus._

_Barry struggles to complete tasks as given._

_Barry has difficulty listening to instructions._

_Barry is a distraction in class._

 

Whirring, almost never stopped. Sometimes it was cool stuff about science, or school. Sometimes it wasn’t.

 

It was lonely.

 

He loved his father. He loved Joe.

 

It was just hard when you didn’t belong to anyone. Not really.

 

His father got out of prison and left. Joe had his own son back.

 

 

Anyway.

 

He gave them some space. Took a step back. He found an apartment close to the lab, with tall windows and a view of a park.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

Harrison was hard to be around. Harder than Eobard had been. As ludicrous as it sounded, they all acknowledged with silent looks at each other how much easier it had been to get along with Eobard. Even as he’d been pretending and lying and plotting.

 

Harrison Wells had been his hero.

 

Harry Wells could be an absolute asshole.

 

That’s all there was to it.

 

Within the first few days, Barry grew to really dislike him. He rubbed everyone the wrong way. Always making it so goddamn clear how little he thought of their plans, their company. Cradling that giant gun; sitting apart from them all.

 

It got better. It got a lot better.

 

Barry sometimes still flinched when he turned too quickly.

 

So it made sense to move him into his apartment after Jesse went home. Really, he was least likely of the whole team to murder him in his sleep. And he really didn’t want Wells to screw things up for his dad.

 

He was wanted for murder, so he moved him into his apartment. It was a temporary move that felt tactical, until it didn’t.

 

So, he set up the 2nd bedroom and pulled an old kitchen table up the stairs for the equipment they stole from the lab.

 

Well, it was his lab.

 

 

The problem really, is that Barry disliked Harrison until he didn’t.

 

Barry disliked Harrison until Harry was holding his face in his hands and couldn’t look him in the eyes.

 

* * *

 

 

This new threat was some kind of meta human.

 

“Probably,” Caitlin said. She was rubbing at her forehead, staring at the screens in front of her.

 

“The scans are all over the map- it doesn’t _act_ like a human, but the blood sample-”

 

“I’ll get another one from it, just give me the location.” He tapped at his leg, wanting to be chasing it already.

 

“Be careful. I don’t think this meta is alone. There’s something else going on.” Caitlin frowns again at her screens, but gives Barry the location.

 

He listens, but he doesn’t. Or he does, but it’s impossible.

 

It was a he, or an it. It was just some hulked up, rage filled version of a meta. It threatened his father. He felt his chest constrict as it raved. It knew his name. It was getting commands from an earpiece.

 

Barry was fast. That didn’t mean he couldn’t get beat to shit if someone caught him. He healed fast, sure. That was great. It still hurt like hell though.

 

He let himself drift a little as the hulking creature whaled on him. He’d had a plan.

 

At some point.

 

To wait until the thing did something, then he’d get away.

But, it was getting tough to put that piece together, now. A little bleary. So, in the end it was just luck. He stumbled, and the thing, creature, had slipped with him, and that was it. He took off.

 

 

Forget catching the creature, or stopping it. He barely got away as it howled.

 

 

He waited until his voice wouldn't waver, and said he was fine. He turned off his own earpiece.

 

He couldn’t. Not right now. 

 

 

He’d run back to his place, hoping Harry would be working, distracted so he could crawl into his room and sleep. He fumbled the door open.

 

Harry had been working, but he stopped. On the scarred kitchen table he’d lined up what looked like the inside of his watch. His eyes were black, but no, that wasn’t right…

 

“Fuck.”

 

He clicked off the soldering iron, pushed up his safety glasses, and walked straight towards him.

 

This Harrison Wells was not a toucher. He did not put himself in any positions where he might be touched. He did not shake hands, or accept mugs. He’d been wary before Cisco grabbed him, and he was pathological about it now.

 

He dropped the goggles on the counter and moved right into Barry’s space. He puts his hot hands right on Barry’s face.

 

Barry doesn’t move. He dislikes Harry, who’s rude and dismissive, and maybe a killer. But, he’s tired, and hurt, and it’s still a little hard to put his thoughts together in order right now.

 

Harry is pulling his cowl off, not gently. It stings, and he makes a noise. It’s something he’d keep in if he was all there, but he makes the noise before he realizes it, and Harry mutters something, very low.

 

“Sorry.”

 

Barry raises one hand, to the edge of his mask, meaning to help, but Harry makes a short movement with his own hand, so he drops his arm, lets himself lean back, feeling the counter press up against him.

 

“This was the 10 foot tall mutant meta?” His voice is still low, and it feels soothing to Barry. Everything is buzzing, but this is still.

 

He nods.

 

“More like 12 feet though.” He can hear his own voice, too loud in his head, and slurring the words together.

 

That gets him a distracted eye roll as he continues to pull his mask away.

 

“What’s it look like when you get close?” Harry’s fingers brush over the leather stitching at his neck, right where it started to come apart. He shakes his head, but it makes him dizzy, so he talks instead.

 

“Said something ‘bout my dad.”

 

Harry flinches, tiny movement, but he’s so close. He’s standing so close.

 

“ ‘m just tired, though. Y’ know? Just…want him to be safe. But he’s not. And it’s my fault.”

 

Harry’s hot hands stop fighting with his suit.

 

“People have it a lot worse than me, I know that. I’m not an idiot. I’m lucky.” His face is mostly still numb, and maybe the words are hard to understand. He raises his hand up to his face again, about to prod his jaw, to feel for broken bones.

 

Harry brings his hand up, covers his own.

 

“Don’t touch.” He’s staring at Barry, but doesn’t meet his eyes. He brings his left hand up, slower, and parts his hair around his right ear. He feels a sting, and realizes he must have been hit there as well.

 

“Fuck.” He’d jerked his head a little, closed his eyes.

 

He feels slow now, feeling Harrison breathe in front of him. He takes a few big breaths of his own, opening his eyes again.

 

Blue eyes, aimed at his hairline. He drifts.

 

“You’re such a fucking mess, Barry.”

 

Blood dripping down his throat, he nods at that. Yeah. Yes, he is.

 

He sighs again, brushes Barry’s hair back with his left hand, and tightens his fingers around his, quick, before letting go.

 

“Not your fault though.”

 

He makes Barry spit into the kitchen sink, and pulls the leathers off him while he steadies a hand on his shoulder.

 

"Your system is overloaded right now. You're already healing though; I can see it."

 

“You’re really hot.” He blurts, feeling the heat radiating through the thin cotton of his long-sleeved shirt. He can feel his ribs shift in his own chest. Sluggishly knitting back together.

 

“That happens when you live in a crumbling building with an off-site super.” He glances up at Barry, tugging on one sweaty boot. His face softens a bit. “Plus, I run hotter. Totally normal on my Earth.”

 

“How do you keep people from noticing that?”

 

“I don’t go around making a habit of touching people all the time, Barry.” Pointed.

 

Meaning, people don’t touch me.

 

“Step out.” He swayed, tightening his hand around his shoulder. It draws a grunt out of the other man.

 

Harry then made him drink water, and lowered him onto his bed. His body had started to heal, but everything was still a little hazy, still a little blurry.

 

His bed is cool, and the room is dark.

 

He sleeps, or he passes out.

 

At some point he’s conscious again. He’s warm. The bedroom isn’t cool anymore, although he can tell the window is open.

 

It’s a feeling, more than anything else.

 

The bed dipped and he closed his eyes against it.

 

He feels the shifts as a body settles.

 

He blinks, once, twice, feels everything still a little hazy around the edges.

The warm shape shifts, and Barry can see the slight glow of the modified tablet Harry used.

 

For the first time since he stumbled home, the older man meets his eyes. They looked at each other for at least 10 seconds.

 

“Go to sleep, Barry,” he finally said, softly.

 

 

* * *

 

 

The thing is, other people felt cold to him now. He knew, he was the one who was different; body pumping out heat.

 

Putting his arm around Patty. He thought she’d been cold, but she’d shifted away, just a little. He’d run to the restaurant, so he’d been warm. He should have known, by now. It makes people uncomfortable. Just a little too hot to be normal.

 

She was so pretty, and smart, and funny. She was exactly what he’d wanted.

 

He’d talked too much. He talked about work, and the movie, and about the food. He asked too many questions, maybe. Too quickly.

 

Not to mention the monsters.

 

Anyway.

 

 

* * *

 

 

He spends a few more nights working with Harry. Pressed thigh to thigh together on his small couch, or across a desk in the lab.

 

He works out later, sticks around where before he would run on his treadmill and then go back to being Barry. See friends, read a book, go for coffee. Go on dates.

 

He doesn’t really do those things anymore.

 

 

They have a routine. He finishes work, goes to the lab, where he suits up and goes out to put out any fires that Zoom has set. Sometimes it works. They try to track the thing that beat the shit out of Barry. They don't. He gets back, Cisco and Caitlin run whatever tests they need to on him, and Harry never once tells him, “Run, Barry, run.” He just looks.

 

Then, when he can’t avoid it anymore, he pulls his pants back on, shoves his feet into his shoes, and loops his belt and his sweater around his neck. He walks up to Harry, waits until he saves or puts his tools away, pulls on his black hat and black coat, then they walk home. At normal, human being speed.

 

The next day is the same.

 

* * *

 

 

He presses the towel to his face, wipes down his neck. He knows it’s late, later than they usually stay.

 

He pushes through the lab doors, going room to room, looking for Harry. He’s not working on the new serum. He’s not making coffee.

 

He’s hunched over a laptop in Cisco’s work room. Another monitor close by is turned to the security feed, another is streaming local news, with no sound.

 

Harry knows he’s here, he always does.

 

He steps closer behind him to see what he’s working on. He sees the filepath for a folder he wishes they never had to create.

 

“Anybody capable of hurting you is also more likely to catch the Flash than Barry Allen,” Harry pronounces, scrolling through Cisco and Caitlin’s careful records of his encounters with “the bad guys”. He pauses at the pictures of his own face, more than a year old now, and scans the case notes. His shoulder jerks a little, and then he starts typing.

 

“You trust too much, Barry.” He keeps his eyes on the screen.

 

“From now on, don’t use your powers, ever, unless you’re wearing the suit. Not if you’re late, not if you’re trying to impress some girl, not if there’s a fucking cat up in a tree.” His glasses reflect the bluish light from the screen. Lines of text and his own reflection, looming behind him. He doesn’t like his own expression.

 

“If you really want to protect your friends, your father, you’ll protect yourself first.” Harry finally looks at Barry. He holds his gaze for 2 seconds, 3 maybe, before he ducks his head down.

 

His hands are wrapped around his towel, knotted up in the cotton. He makes himself let go.

 

Harry’s turned back to the screen. He doesn’t move or type.

 

He sometimes stares at nothing, ignoring them all while they talk around him. He’s in his own head, thinking about whatever he left behind on Earth 2.

 

Or whoever.

 

They don’t bring up Jesse. She's safe, and happy.

 

* * *

 

 

 

So he looks. He’s looking for something. A reason. Why he’s this way.

 

 

A man’s body. The same size as his. Large hands and gray in a beard that he never lets grow in. Blue eyes.

 

It’s so different.

 

After Harry put him to bed, things seem the same.

 

They look the same.

 

But, it aches.

 

He hates it. It’s awful and so unlike any other feeling he’s ever had.

 

He likes love. He likes feeling excited and drunk, happy to be in their orbit.

 

But that’s not what this is. Not like this.

 

He looks at the face of the man who killed his mother, and thinks about how it was to feel his weight in the bed beside him.

 

Of course he’s doing this. Who else would get fucked up by a man twenty years older than him. A man that seems to actively dislike him. A man from another dimension that has the same face and name and DNA as the man that ruined his life.

 

A man when he’s only ever liked girls. Sweet and smart and kind and beautiful.

 

He’s not any of that.

 

But he’s the smartest person Barry’s ever met. Bar none. He’s already got the answer before the rest of them start to even ask the question. He masters everything he’s given. And he builds.

 

* * *

 

 

His back muscles play against the fabric of his t shirt. It’s Barry’s shirt, again. A t-shirt. Something he’s worn a hundred times, under sweaters, to sleep in.

 

Barry stands, completely still. Watching Harry crouch down and tighten bolts on a bulkhead for some new containment chamber he and Cisco thought up.

 

Everyone else has left, so no one is here to see him do this.

 

And he’s sick. His stomach is dropping away from the rest of him. His skin hums.

 

_He watches you, too._

 

He’s just lonely.

 

He tells himself, over and over.

 

He’s just not sure anymore if he’s talking about Harrison or himself.

 

 

* * *

 

 

In the end, the ones controlling the new meta don’t go for his father. They go for the man sleeping in his guest room.

 

Later, he figures out that they followed him home. That one time; must have. He was too beat to watch his back. No one has to tell him that he did it. He led them to his home.

 

They’re there, in his building.

 

He is sitting in a debriefing at work when they force the door, bouncing it back off the old tile in the hallway. He can see the cracks in the century old floor later. He is listening to a consultant talk about evidence chain procedures when Harry breaks one of their wrists.

 

They record it, is how he knows. That’s how he can pinpoint it, later. They post it and send Cisco a link.

 

 So there's video of Harry’s elbow, which breaks the camera man’s nose. But 6 to 1 was never going to result in anything else.

 

They drag him down the stairs into the alley behind the laundry room. One of the 6 with a red face and bloody chin, and another with one arm hugged against his chest.

 

They wrench his arms behind his back, use that to force him to his knees. Someone hits him in the face. The camera shakes a little.

 

Two of them are shouting questions about Barry at him. 

 

In the last 2 months, Cisco had made them all panic buttons. Built into watches or bracelets. Easy to use, and directly linked to Barry’s phone.

 

Cisco had grudgingly given Harrison his. Built into the strap of a plain rubber band.

 

He’s not using it. He doesn’t even make a move to tap it on his wrist. He’s not doing anything.

 

There’s 6 of them. The meta isn’t there, but it doesn’t really matter.

 

He says something to one of them, and gets hit so hard that the two holding him have to obviously prop him up.

 

Blood spatter, Barry knows. He knows the patterns it makes when someone is on their knees, when they don’t use their hands or arms to block the blows. He knows what kind of patterns are made from fists and boots. He knows that the longer a human being is beaten, the darker the blood gets, because the heart is frantically pumping more, faster, with less oxygenation. The heart’s trying to fix things, faster faster.

 

It only slows after

 

He knows he knows

 

He knows Harrison’s heart beats as fast as anyone else’s.

 

It’s on the walls and across the ground.

 

_He didn’t use it because he didn’t want them to-_

 

He let them beat him because he didn’t want them to look for Barry.

 

 

* * *

 

 

He is at the hospital, and time, always gone so fast for Barry. Always buzzing, whirring, never still. Time is stopped.

 

Everything is still, in his head. There’s nothing he’ll let himself look at. He holds himself blank.

 

He’s just so tired, and he wants to rest.

 

He’s done this before. He didn’t think-

 

_He didn’t think didn’t think_

 

Why him?

 

He tells them he’s his boyfriend. He doesn’t have a story straight, doesn’t have ID for Harry. Doesn’t know much beyond the fact that this is the easiest story to tell. They can focus on the fact that Harrison is twenty years older, that his younger boyfriend is staring at the vending machines with unfocused eyes.

 

He lets his vision slowly blur.

 

Harry, a body in an alley. Maybe a message for Barry. Maybe just a half-assed execution.

 

His glasses had been smashed on the ground.

 

They beat him so badly his face is swollen.

 

 

 

No one is going to recognize him. The genius billionaire. Not when they found him laid out in the alley behind an old apartment block. Not when they had to cut him out of an old Central Tech sweatshirt

 

No one is going to think this is the guy that blew up Central City, or disappeared after confessing to a 20 year old murder.

 

He stands in the stairwell, after.

 

He’d frozen, in front of the doctor. Listening to her talk about possible skull fractures and cracked ribs.

 

_No one will know. They can’t tell._

Talking himself into feeling safe enough to leave him there that night.

 

He doesn't.

 

* * *

 

 

At hour 30 he’s stable enough that they really start to push to see some ID. He knows enough about himself that he doesn’t try to tell them anything too elaborate.

 

“I’m his only family here,” he blinked, and rubbed his hand across the insurance forms on the counter.

 

“He’s here because of me. He came here, and now…”

 

“He’s .”

 

 

 

Eobard had always told him “less is more” when they talked about hiding his identity from people. “You don’t have to lie, Barry. Just choose what parts of the truth to tell them.”

 

This was kind of the same thing.

 

It was funny, because Harry would think this was just the stupidest thing. Standing here, in front of the admitting nurse, still in yesterday’s sweat-stiff clothes, talking about his _feelings_.

 

 

He moved here to be with me. My family doesn’t like him.

 

He pulls out his credit card, the one tied to S.T.A.R. Labs, and tries to put it all on the card.

That’s not it. It can’t have been. It was inevitable, from the moment they dragged Harrison into the alley and started recording. Barry tells himself this, but only after a few hours of going over it all, over and over.

 

_A real stupid move._

 

It wasn’t just the card.

 

But it didn’t help.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

Harrison focuses his good eye on him.

 

“You’re such a fucking idiot,” he rasps. It’s hard to listen to the sound, seeing the deep bruises around his throat.

 

He hunches his shoulders a little, prepares himself to hear about trying to pay for a $43,000 hospital bill with an AMEX.

 

“Should’ve just left me there, called an ambulance,” he stops talking here, making a frustrated noise.

 

Stupidly, he feels his eyes sting, knows he can’t do that.

 

 

* * *

 

 

It’s shady. Most people seem to think it is, anyway. A few people remember Harrison Wells in a lecture hall during the murder. A few others say it was never him there that night. It doesn’t help that someone posted the footage of Eobard’s confession online.

 

Harry tells the police, truthfully, that he didn’t kill Nora Allen, and neither did Henry. They take him to the station as soon as he can stand. His one eye is still blood red with blown capillaries, and his healing ribs mean he can only sit for 10 minutes at a time, but he passes the lie detector test just fine.

 

The photographers that followed them from the hospital catch Harry leaving the station too. He’s dressed all in black and scowling.

 

It’s a mess. It’s everything they were trying to fix, blown up in their faces. Because Harry didn’t trust him. He doesn't hear any cameras, but he'd been distracted.

 

 

* * *

 

 

He moves. He can’t not.

 

Caitlin hires a lawyer, and the lawyer hires a publicist, and the publicist’s official statement mentions “a difficult time”, and their unofficial message comes from a few people she hires to talk to the right blogs about Harrison’s father and grandfather committing suicide (Harry’s didn’t, not really). But it’s only when someone tweets the pictures of them yelling at each other in the street that people start to back off on the constant calls to hang Harrison for murder.

 

The pictures aren’t flattering, but the point is that Harrison Wells looks like a real human being in them, with feelings. A human being who is being screamed at by someone who might be his boyfriend. The boyfriend happens to be crying his eyes out, and also happens to be Barry Allen, son of Nora Allen.

 

He’s too exhausted, mentally and physically, to care that his face is in the pictures.

 

He sees his dad once, they have coffee in Seattle. They skip over a lot of things. He doesn’t blame him.

 

The police look for a man named Eobard that he knows they won’t find. They won’t come after his dad again, and probably won’t come after Harry again.

 

That feels numb.

 

He gets very tired, very quickly with all the bullshit that gets written about him. Harry too. Not _him_ , but him, now.

 

"Cradle robber, cocaine addict, insurance scammer, love-sick idiot."

 

He lets the screen dim after reading them out loud.

 

Harry turns from his own laptop screen and glances at the tablet in Barry’s hands.

 

“Should’ve gone with the murderer angle.”

 

To Barry’s credit, he doesn’t flinch. He would have, before.

 

Harry’s shoulders tighten and he mutters, “Shit, sorry.”

 

As unbelievable as it is, he sometimes forgets that he’s walking around with the face of a man who had, in fact, murdered Barry’s mother.

 

  

Anyway.

 

He’d been yelling at Harrison for being a goddamned idiot who didn’t trust Barry enough to take care of himself, and instead almost got himself beat to death. Really, people see what they want in photos like that.

 

Picture 1: Asshole ignoring the other asshole screaming at him in the street

Picture 2: Harrison Wells looking quietly devastated by what’s being screamed at him.

Picture 3: Harrison Wells standing very close to Barry Allen, who isn’t screaming anymore.

 

He taps the tablet again, and clicks on the link for the article Cisco sent him.

 

_Dr. Harrison Wells, former beloved scientist savant of Central City, former recluse, and former murder suspect, comforts reported boyfriend Barry Allen in street outside police station._

_The 47 year old recently mysteriously re-appeared after months of speculation around his seeming suicide. Leaving a stoic and unemotional taped message, the award-winning physicist confessed to killing Nora Allen almost twenty years ago. That taped confession triggered the release of Nora Allen’s husband, Henry Allen, convicted in 2001. Adding a further twist, Nora Allen’s now adult son, Barry Allen, was named the inheritor of Wells’ S.T.A.R. Labs and all its assets. The 27 year old CCPD employee has not released an official statement, but sources confirm that he does refer to Harrison Wells as his boyfriend._

_Never charged, former employees report Wells as being withdrawn and depressed after the explosion that claimed 17 lives and injured many more. This left many to speculate that Wells had indeed taken his own life when the video clip surfaced. Many are now wondering if Wells planned on committing suicide, with guilt driving him to leave boyfriend Allen with a significant bequeathal of assets and a very significant false confession to free the elder Allen. The question now remains: what happened to draw Wells back to the younger man, and what, if anything, did it have to do with the mysterious altercation and hospitalization he experienced last month? The hospital admittance papers only give the name “Harry Allen”, which seems to indicate a very specific relationship between the two men. No marriage license has been recovered, as of yet._

 

He supposes it will have to do. He’s tired and buzzing, and this thing just keeps tangling them up. The meta human and its handlers are still free. His stuff is in boxes scattered around the apartment, and nothing works. He dumps the tablet on the dresser, and pulls his shirt off. He unbuckles his pants, but is too tired to do much but step out of them. He pulls the blanket off the bed and crawls in, too hot to want anything wrapped around him.

 

He could fall asleep, but he waits.

 

It’s not that long. The thump is his boots, outside the bedroom door. It’s full dark now, except for the light through the window from the building next to his. So he doesn’t see his face, but he can tell his shape. In his outline, the specific drop of his shoulders as he eases his bad shoulder through his sleeve. The sound of his watch as it hits the bedside table. It vibrates, once, against the wood. Doing exactly what it’s supposed to be doing, and telling its wearer that there’s a meta human in the room.

 

“Go to sleep.” Hoarse and familiar.

 

Barry closes his eyes. The bed dips, then re-settles.

He sleeps. 

 

* * *

 


End file.
